Chapter Text
PART V
Ford is used to what Bill liked to call "interdimensional chess". Bill used to say it was "better" than regular chess solely because it took place in the mindscape.
Needless to say, it had been a while since he'd used his own chess set. It had spent years in a closet collecting dust, and honestly, he'd almost forgotten he'd had it at all. He would occasionally play with Fiddleford when they needed a break, but he was never as invested as Ford sometimes got.
"You still remember how to play?"
"Of course I still remember."
"Good. Just checking to make sure you aren't completely senile yet. It won't be any fun if I walk all over you."
Interesting. Ford quirks a brow. "You're not planning on letting me win this time, I take it?" he asks as he starts setting out the pieces. It's a ritual he's done countless times now against all sorts of opponents, but it almost feels brand new every time.
"God no. You're in for it this time, old man."
"Mm. I admire your optimism," he says, hoping that he doesn't sound as eager as he feels.
"Optimism is my middle name!"
Ford pauses for a moment to look over at him, quirking a brow. "You told me your middle name was Augustus."
"No, I told you that so you wouldn't think I'm a dork. My actual middle name is Cornelius."
Ford's left eye gives an involuntary twitch. "...You're messing with me."
Bill pretends to shoot him with a finger gun. "Bingo!"
Finally satisfied with the placement of the pieces, Ford pours himself a cup of tea, then reaches over and does the same for Bill. It is a ritual, in a way. A ritual of their own. "Are you ready?" he asks as he settles into his chair.
"As I'll ever be, Fordsy." Bill rubs his hands together like he's looking at a delicious home-cooked meal and leans over the board. "Let's see..." He wiggles his fingers, his hand hovering over one of the pawns, "I think I'll start with this guy."
Two spaces forward. The same move Bill always starts with.
"Is he trying to throw me off?"
No. There's no need to overthink it. There are no stakes in this game.
"Ha! You act like I'm gonna eat your soul if you lose! This is just a friendly game Sixer, no stakes! Take it easy!"
"Can you actually... do that? Eat my soul?"
"Wouldn't you like to know? Beat me, and then maybe I'll tell you."
"...A game is no fun without a bet," Ford says observationally as he reaches for his pawn. "You told me that once."
"Sure did," Bill says in agreement, watching his hand closely. "I told you lots of things."
"You didn't attempt to use this game to bargain for something you want."
"You wouldn't have agreed to it if I had," Bill counters. "Unless you're that confident you can win? In which case, maybe we could make this interesting."
Ford doesn't feel much like indulging him today. "Whether you finally respect me as an opponent or not, the outcome will remain the same. I'll beat you."
Bill grabs his teacup, gently stirring the liquid inside with his finger- before suddenly remembering that it was, in fact, scalding- and that sort of thing kind of matters now, actually. "...Respect you as an opponent, huh?" He tries to be subtle and play it off as he plops the cup down, his tongue slipping out from beneath his eye to curl around his injured finger. "I don't even respect you as a person."
"Liar. You'd never admit to respecting anybody. But I know what you do to people you don't respect."
"And why should I respect you? After you betrayed me and ruined everything?"
It's a question designed to rile him up, make him mad- perhaps even mad enough to make a silly mistake, or not notice his moves. "Oh, I don't know, maybe because I've been more than merciful towards you, even after everything you've done," Ford calmly suggests. "Just a thought."
Bill rolls his lone eye. "There you go with all that high and mighty nonsense. You see, you act like you're above all this, but I know you'd just love to hear me admit that you're the best mortal enemy I've ever had. But to be honest Fordsy, compared to some of the folks I've tussled with, you don't even make the top ten."
It was meant to be a jab at him, but there's undoubtedly some truth to it. As old as he is, Bill has come into contact with all sorts of beings- beings that Ford probably can't even perceive as a human. Gods, demi-gods, demons, eldritch horrors, cosmic entities- compared to creatures like that, Ford is admittedly rather unremarkable.
And yet, despite that, Bill is here. In his house. Playing chess with him.
After all, where else was he going to go? He's certainly made his fair share of enemies. The only "friends" he'd ever had left him behind- and with good reason. It's just that Ford happens to be the only one stupid enough to let him back in.
"...I see. You don't regard me as an enemy, then?" he finally asks.
"I regard you as a guy who's making me impatient with all this yapping." Bill reaches across the table and taps his nose. "It's your turn, brainiac!"
"...This, coming from someone who's in love with the sound of his own voice," Ford retorts as he swats his hand away.
"You must know a lot about that."
Ford clicks his tongue. "That was a disappointing comeback. I expected better. Besides, I'm more in love with the sound of winning." He snags one of Bill's pawns, unable to keep the smug look off his face. "Personally."
Bill watches him take it, his king and queen now left with one less defender. His pupil expands a bit and he sighs, sipping at his tea. "Gosh, it really is so cute when you think you've got me beat. No wonder I let you win all the time."
"You can talk when you've got some of my pieces, Bill." Ford gestures to the board. "It's your move."
Ford has only ever been this stressed out playing chess on one other occasion, and it had been when he was playing for his life against an intergalactic dictator. A different intergalactic dictator than the one currently sitting before him- although if outright called a dictator Bill would surely deny it.
But in that situation, it was more understandable to be stressed when a loss meant a slow and painful death. As he's continued to remind himself, there's nothing on the line here. There couldn't be. Bill knows he'd see right through any lie or scheme he tried to pull.
So what was the endgame here? Was he truly just that bored?
"You've been staring at that rook for an awfully long time," Bill says. "You gonna do something with it or what?"
"I guess I'm just... having trouble understanding your endgame," Ford admits, still partially lost in his own head as he reaches for the piece.
"The endgame is to win, obviously."
"That's all?"
Bill seems to catch on to the implication and leans back in his chair. "You know, if you think about it, our chess games were never for anything other than entertainment, so I'm not sure why you're all jumpy."
"You call manipulation entertainment?"
Bill blinks absently. "...Well, yes. But that's not what I'm getting at. Sure, I used those games as a way to build a bond between us so that you would trust me, but that doesn't mean it wasn't fun. You had fun, right?"
"Don't ask questions you already know the answers to."
"But you'll feel better once you admit it," Bill counters. "At least, that's what the shrink told me. But hey, what do those guys know? Seriously. What do those guys know? At all? About anything?"
Ford's not sure what triggers it, especially when Bill is talking just to talk, but the overwhelming urge to prove him wrong pushes him to argue. "I'm still working on it, but I can at least admit it now. But you can't own up to a single mistake that you've made. In your eyes you've done nothing wrong and everything right, and everyone who opposes you is either a fool or boring or close-minded. You think that doing to other worlds what you did to your own will somehow make the regret go away, but it won't. It'll just build and build and build." Ford leans in, the icy words continuing to tumble out of his mouth. "That's why you hated the Theraprism. Because they refused to let you continue to ignore the truth."
He settles back into his chair, hanging his head, unable to look him in the eye. "...After all, you can take it from me. Running from regret doesn't make it go away. All those years when I thought I was running towards you, to find you and bring you down... I wasn't. Not really. I was just running away."
The room suddenly goes deathly quiet. Ford doesn't look at him to see his reaction- even though a part of him wants to.
The silence drags on for far too long, uncomfortable and heavy. Ford considers changing the topic to break the tension, but Bill speaks before he can.
"Was it easier for you?" he asks.
"...Well, obviously," Ford says earnestly. "I always used to say I would never try to go back home for the sake of the universe. That was true- I knew my portal was unstable. But... even if I could have safely returned, I... don't know if I would have at that time. Because it was easier to run. But I was lucky enough to have someone that didn't let me."
"You call that lucky?"
"Yes," Ford says. "Because I discovered that I still had a family."
"A family that only ever dragged you down," Bill quips. He shuffles around a bit, and Ford looks up just in time to see Bill pulling his hat off. He reaches down inside of it, swishing his hand around for a bit, then pulls out a tiny, glowing speck.
"They tried to take it from me in the Theraprism," he says. "Guess they thought it wasn't good for me to have. It was the only..."
Bill trails off, either unable or unwilling to finish the sentence.
"...The only thing you felt like you had left," Ford finishes. The last remaining piece of a lost world right before his eyes- and Bill has kept it safe, perfectly preserved like a rare jewel. It is the one thing- the only thing- that Bill hasn't tried to destroy with his bare hands, and that alone makes it special.
Bill doesn't confirm or deny it, but he doesn't need to. He stares at the speck between his fingers, the look in his normally expressive eye now unreadable.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm the only thing keeping it alive. Like if I separate from it, it'll just vanish, and then... that's that. Poof." He laughs bitterly. "Doesn't matter anyway, everybody's gone now. It's just me. I could crush it right now and it wouldn't change a thing."
"But you've kept it this long for a reason," Ford says.
Bill blinks as if breaking out of a trance. "I never should have showed you this," he counters as he drops the speck back into his hat. "But I got soft on you. Grew to like you too much, and I didn't have the heart to get rid of you when I had the chance. You see what happens when creatures like me get too involved with humans? There's a reason I tried to keep my distance from you disgusting flesh sacks. But then you came along, with your big stupid shiny eyes." He barks out another dry laugh. "Seriously. Who the hell summons a demon from some creepy cave painting? You're like, every dumb horror movie protagonist ever."
"Why did that have to be so bad?" Ford asks. "I mean, don't you ever get tired of running? God knows I did."
"Time isn't on your side, Fordsy. Of course you got tired."
Bill leans over and taps Ford's rook piece.
"As much as Time Baby would like to disagree, time very much is on my side, even though I don't control it anymore." He slides the rook across the middle of the board. "And the multiverse is infinite. I'll never run out of places to go."
He moves the rook vertically all the way up to the opposite side of the board, near where his king and queen sit.
"But the Axolotl is looking for you. And as long as you continue to pose a threat, they likely won't rest until they have you contained again," Ford points out.
"Lots of people either want to kill me or lock me up. The Axolotl can get in line."
"I used to be first in line," Ford says, almost wistfully. "If you recall."
Bill hums thoughtfully. "I guess if I had to give someone the honor of killing me, you might be in the list of people I'd consider," he says. Ford can't tell if he's joking or not. "But you've gone soft, too. The opportunity's been handed to you on a silver platter and you won't take it, so I might just have to pass it over to the next person in line."
Ford narrows his eyes suspiciously. "What do you mean?"
Bill puts the rook back in its rightful spot. "Beat me, and maybe you'll find out."
Ford discovers that Bill is actually pretty good at chess when he's playing genuinely. But he gets overzealous, and he makes the mistake of assuming that Ford still plays chess the way he did as the overthinking, starry-eyed young man he met all those years ago.
And Bill's not even that good of an actor- not really. So Ford could tell that he wasn't faking his frustration every time Ford crept closer to checkmate.
When the moment finally came, Bill just sat back, his eye curving up in amusement. "So, I guess you can give me an honest game of chess after all."
Ford smiles back. "I didn't think I'd ever be able to say the same about you."
Bill props his legs up on the table. "Since you won, how about a prize? I'll give you my one last offer- deal of the century, only going once!"
Ford sighs, knowing that he'll probably regret asking. "What is it?"
Ford should have known, in the end, that Bill wouldn't be able to resist one last deal. And he supposes that he's guilty of the same.
"He says he'll call the whole thing off. Weirdmaggedon, that is. As long as we let him escape, and... if the Theraprism comes knocking, we aren't supposed to answer."
"Seriously? That's his 'final offer'? He must really think we're stupid," Dipper says with a laugh. "How can we guarantee that he won't just come back and start Weirdmaggedon again anyway? Is his word all we have to go on?"
"Consider the Theraprism your safety net. If I break the deal, all it takes is one call to them. Like you said, you and Banjo could whip up a communicator with no problem. I mean, whether or not they'd be able to stop me at full power is debatable, but that's besides the point. If I betray you, you've got one of the most powerful beings in the entire universe in your corner."
"And how do you know I won't just call the Theraprism anyway?"
"I don't. This deal requires an immense amount of trust on both ends, but I think we could come to some sort of agreement, don't you? After all, I'm only asking for a head start."
"I dunno, I mean... I don't think Bill can actually do Weirdmaggedon again," Mabel points out. "He threatens us with it, but... I mean, come on. Look at him. He's... you know. Pathetic."
"Mabel... does have a point," Ford admits. "Although I'd never be naive enough to assume that Bill is totally helpless, his injury won't allow him to host something like Weirdmaggedon."
"Besides, I don't even think his heart is really in it now that his friends are gone," Mabel adds. "If he did it, he'd just do it because he said he would, but it would lack passion, you know?"
Dipper shoots her a sour look. "Mabel, that's not helping."
"No, she's right," Ford says, nodding along. "Bill likes to have an audience. He surrounds himself with fanatics and henchmen to convince himself that he's not lonely, but right about now he's the loneliest creature in the universe. By now, word has spread around- about his failure. At the hands of children, no less. People will have lost respect for him. It'll be a lot harder for Bill to build up a new crew."
"But you know we can't take that chance," Stan says firmly. "Don't you?"
Dipper and Mabel both turn to look at Ford. Ford quickly looks over at Stan and sighs. "...Yes. I know."
"You know that by letting him go there's a chance he could come back stronger than ever, and we'd be royally screwed. The twin trick won't work twice," Stan reminds him. "And we can't rely on these space people. For all we know they're worse than Bill. We can't depend on them to pull our asses out of the fire."
As if he needed a reminder that they'd only won by the skin of their teeth.
"I know."
Stan claps a hand on his shoulder. "I know you think you're seein' some... new side of him. Maybe you are. But that doesn't change the fact that we've gotta put this family first. Bill needs to sort his own shit out and he needs to do it far away from us."
Ford shrugs his hand off, like he hasn't lost countless hours of sleep and time that could be spent with his family over this. "Of course I know that! Everything that I've been doing is for this family- to keep us safe!"
"Oh really? Your chess games and your secret meetings are all for the family, right?"
Mabel gasps, eyes widening in shock, while Dipper turns to look the other way, pretending not to have heard anything.
Ford steps closer, now properly seething. "Are you insinuating something, Stanley?"
"No, he's not," Mabel interrupts, standing between the two of them. "Right, Grunkle Stan? Say that you're not."
Upon seeing the look on Mabel's face, still round with the baby fat she had yet to lose, Stan immediately softens. "...No. I'm not. All I'm saying is that maybe... you're too close to this. And maybe it's time you stop trying to do everything on your own and let us help."
"...Fine." Ford shoves past him and makes a beeline for the door. "Fine."
"Where are you going?" Dipper asks.
"I'm going to make preparations at the bunker. Stanley's right. It's time we end this."